Our Story
Table of Contents
Our Philosophy
At Kobayashi, we see bartending as a practice of rhythm, awareness, and connection. Every movement and every detail matters. Our role is to design stations and systems that support this flow, so bartenders can work with clarity, precision, and ease.
Lineage and Humble Beginnings
Kobayashi was established in the Netherlands in 2017, shaped by years of hands-on work in hospitality. But its roots go back much further, into my family’s story, into a lineage of survival, persistence, and vision that shaped who I am.
I come from a Wenzhounese family, from a raw and rural background in the mountains of China. Life was so poor that sometimes all they had to eat was tree bark.
My father was a math and music teacher, always the artist and the creative soul of the family, but he had to give that up in order to survive. My mother carried the weight of raising four sons in a foreign land, even working while pregnant, and still caring for us.
She once went into labor and had to take herself to the hospital, climbing a long set of stairs in pain because there was no other choice. At one point she was on her last dime, and instead of keeping it, she spent it on fries for us, a small act that showed the selflessness and undying love of a mother who always put her children first. But my mother was more than sacrifice. She was the true chef of the family.
She had a natural gift for creating flavors, a touch and intuition that shaped our home and still carries into the restaurant we run today. My father was the visionary, the artist, the creative spirit, and my mother was the grounding force, the taste, the craft.
Together they worked across practically every corner of hospitality available at the time, from takeaways to kitchens to dining, long hours and constant movement, more than twenty relocations, all while honing their craft.
Through strength, sacrifice, love, and vision, they built a life step by step until years of hard work brought them success as pioneers with one of the Netherlands’ first world kitchens. They have been in this industry for more than 30 years, ever since arriving in the Netherlands in the late 1980s.
That lineage of survival, sacrifice, resilience, love, creativity, and craft is experience that was truly earned. The story of Kobayashi does not begin in 2017, it begins with my parents in the kitchens, with their strength and their vision, with the lessons I absorbed from childhood. Decades of hardship and craft built the foundation.
Collapse and a New Beginning
But after ten years of success with their own restaurant, everything collapsed. My parents lost everything they had worked for, and our family stood at a crossroads.
If nothing was done, the collapse would have pulled us under completely, with the real risk of ending up on the street. At that time, I was living in Shanghai, where I had built a life for myself over two years.
But when the collapse came, I could not leave my family in that situation, and the life I had there could no longer be sustained. I gave up everything, my relationships, my friends, my stability, and returned home with nothing more than willpower, ambition, and my love for my family.
Together with my older brother who is two years above me, and his best friend, we decided to step in. The three of us laid the foundation for a new beginning. Our years in Shanghai had exposed us to a world of concepts, flavors, and ideas we had never seen before.
Design, sushi, cocktails, atmosphere, all of that inspiration stayed with us and helped shape what would come next. When my third brother later joined the project, he carried on the role of my mother as the true chef, creating the menu and bringing his own creativity to the food.
My mother still works alongside him to this day, continuing to create flavors that guests enjoy. We each found our own role. My brother became head of the kitchen, my other brother took charge of finance, his best friend became the head of operations running the restaurant, and I found my way behind the bar, discovering the world of cocktails, a new avenue none of us had known before.
That choice led to 2014, when we opened Shiki Sushi & Lounge. Shiki became more than a restaurant. It was survival, but also vision and persistence. I designed and built the entire place alongside my partners, often working day and night through a seven-month construction period.
It was a trial by fire, long hours, little sleep, and health struggles that pushed me to my limits. By complete coincidence, Shiki opened its doors on my birthday, December 7th, a milestone that came at the end of survival, sacrifice, and endurance.
Challenges Behind the Bar
Opening the doors was only half the battle. Running a restaurant quickly taught me that building something beautiful does not guarantee success. A bar can look sleek on the outside, but if what is under the hood does not work, you are in constant survival mode.
I often compare it to a car: the aesthetics are the bodywork and paint, what guests see. But the engine, the station, the ice, the storage, the workflow, is what truly matters. If the engine fails, it does not matter how polished the outside looks, you break down in the middle of service. At Shiki, our engine was unreliable.
I developed back problems from poor ergonomics. There was no cohesion in stock management, no reliable supply chain, and many nights I had to buy supplies myself just to get through service.
The glassware was poorly thought out, mismatched shapes and sizes that did not fit the menu or the volume we served, with no sense of uniformity, which only slowed everything down.
Ice was constantly short, and when the ice machine could not keep up, I tried to scoop and store ice in the freezer. But that only gave me giant frozen blocks that I had to Hulk smash apart while tickets were piling up and guests were waiting.
Persistence and Research
I worked seven days a week, filling every role the restaurant demanded, from cleaning toilets to serving guests, running trays, and making drinks.
But I refused to accept that this was the only way. I simply did not take no for an answer. The restaurant was do or die. Failure meant living on the street and being unable to take care of my family.
Slowly but surely, I hacked my way out of the chaos by addressing every issue one by one until the bar became my domain. Over the years, I rebuilt the bar three times, each overhaul bringing me closer to the system I knew we needed.
From Survival to Design
Out of this grind, the idea began to take shape. Not just fixing problems, but reimagining what a bar station could be. After service and late into the night, I spent nearly two years locked away researching everything I could about cocktail stations, hospitality workflow, and bar efficiency.
I studied different styles across multiple countries and continents, breaking down what worked and what did not. My social life disappeared. My health declined. I sacrificed love, connection, and balance. I poured in blood, sweat, and tears because I knew there had to be a better way.
The Prototype Breakthrough
When we finally made the first prototype, it changed everything. But there was still a problem, we could not afford to close the restaurant to install it. So I planned. For three months I coordinated every detail with staff, partners, suppliers, contractors, even guests.
And in the end, we achieved it all in a single night. We broke the entire bar down and rebuilt it from the ground up, high stakes and no room for error. I relied on everything I had learned, from designing and building the restaurant itself to mastering 3D design, to pull it off.
Demand and First Clients
That was a game changer. Bartenders from across the city came to see our bar, especially the cocktail station I had designed. Word spread quickly. The irony was that I never intended to sell it. I had created something for myself, for our restaurant, simply to survive and work better.
But then the questions started coming: where did you get this, who made it, can I order one. The demand came naturally. When my first client asked to buy one, I did not even have a company set up or production in place. But I took the order anyway and built my first commercial station within three months. The rest is history.
Scaling Up
The early years were intense. For the first three years, I worked closely with manufacturing to build every station and often delivered them myself, including maintenance, advising, and consulting. My workload only grew heavier.
One day I would be behind the bar slinging drinks, the next day in a suit presenting designs to the boardroom of one of the largest hotel chains in the Netherlands. Then back to production, guiding fabrication, before returning again to the bar floor to serve guests.
Strategic Partnership
After three years, I knew I could not do it all by myself anymore. That is when I partnered with a good friend who also served the hospitality industry with equipment, Horecarama. This partnership stabilized the business and gave Kobayashi the structure to expand.
It allowed me to refocus on running the restaurant, developing my bar crew, and refining the system further, while also scaling across the Netherlands and into Europe. And then, slowly, the questions started coming from overseas.
Crossing the Ocean
It was humbling to see interest from across the world, but in practice it was a whole different beast. Shipping to the United States was almost undoable, with endless hurdles like customs, freight, packaging, regulations, and licensing.
On top of that, it did not make much economic sense. For a long time, we stayed in our lane and focused on Europe. But I could not shake the idea. So in 2024, I reached out to my best friend in Los Angeles. Together, we decided to set up domestic production locally.
Made in USA
For me, Made in USA means something. It is not just a stamp, it is about empowering locally, sourcing locally, and connecting directly with the bar communities there. By producing on the ground in America, I could not only build closer relationships with bartenders but also adapt the designs to their specific needs.
The result is a lineup tailored specifically for the US market, stations that reflect the pace, volume, and culture of American hospitality. Ironically, this move lined up with the political push for domestic manufacturing, but while others only spoke about it, we actually did it.
We have not seen any direct benefits from that, but the truth is that Kobayashi is producing locally, supporting local supply chains, and embedding itself into the communities we serve.
The Maze
That is why our logo is a maze. It carries all of this, the survival, the sacrifices, the relentless research, the endless iterations, the risks, and the breakthroughs. The maze reflects the path inward, the discipline of repetition, the trials of endurance, and the discovery of flow at the center. Just like bartending itself, mastery is not a straight line but a loop of refinement, patience, and awareness. Whether in Europe or America, Kobayashi was born from that journey, and every station we build carries that story within it.
